


Under Your Spell

by zabjade



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-16 01:19:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16075373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zabjade/pseuds/zabjade
Summary: Willow always tries to help. Willow always wants to make things better and do what’s right. Sometimes, Willow doesn’t really know just what “right” is.





	1. Chapter 1

_And done,_ Willow thought with a smile as she finished the summoning chant. She didn’t have any proof yet that it had worked, but she was sure of it. She’d felt the rising energy as it had swirled around her before dispersing in a rush to do what it was supposed to. Everything had gone right, in part because there hadn’t been any distractions to work around.

She got to her feet and stretched before making her way to the railing so she could lean on it as she gazed down onto the main part of the Magic Box. There was Anya, standing behind the register and counting the cash. Again. At least it kept her busy and not sticking her nose in Willow’s business. And then there was Buffy and Giles, having a pre-patrol conversation about something or other.

Willow narrowed her eyes slightly. Buffy hadn’t been confiding in her as much as she’d hoped she would. That was part of the reason for the summoning spell she’d just performed. If it had worked right – _It did. I_ know _it did_ – then Buffy would have to talk about her feelings. Everyone would.

Things had changed so much in the past year. Despite the time travel comment that had upset Tara so much, Willow couldn’t actually mess with time very much. Yet. With the power she had now, she couldn’t turn everything back to make it easier on Buffy. Erasing everyone’s memories of the time between Buffy’s death and resurrection wouldn’t have been very feasible, though, so she’d gone with something else. She’d start unraveling her spells once Buffy had fully adjusted to being free from that hell dimension. Then everyone could move forward together.

And that would happen a lot faster if Buffy just dealt with what she’d been through. Willow had thought Giles would be a help with that, but he hadn’t really been. He was making it too easy for Buffy to just retreat from the world and her responsibilities. She’d have to do something about it.

As she watched, absently starting to hum a light, bouncy tune, Buffy headed out. Giles sighed, sounding old and tired, before walking back towards the training room. Willow’s gaze followed him until he was out of sight.

“Double, double toil and trouble,” she softly sang. “Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” She twirled away from the railing, grabbing a few of the supplies kept up in the loft. “A bit of this, and a dash of that. Plus a whisker from a stray black cat.”

She dropped off the supplies on a table, humming the tune as she dug up a familiar book. It was the one where she’d found the spell to fix everyone. The one that had taught her how to use Lethe’s Bramble to make Tara forget their argument. And it was where she’d found the spell she’d used before to make Giles leave so he wouldn’t meddle in Buffy’s resurrection. It had been easy, last time, and she’d mostly relied on her ability to talk mind to mind, fostering the idea that he needed to go away to properly mourn. Now, though? It would take a bit more power to get him out of the way.

“A father figure here to save the day.

Don’t you know that you’re in the way?

You think to lead us by the hand,

But in our way, you firmly stand.”

She sat down and flipped through the book. So many spells. So many ways to make things the way they should be. All of them frowned on by Giles, who thought he knew so much, just because he’d dabbled in freaky demon orgies as a teen.

“You are nothing but a meddling old fool,” she sang. “You think to take me back to school. What do you know? What do you care? We’d all be better off if you weren’t there.”

There it was. The spell she needed. She’d remembered most of the ingredients, but there were a few more she’d need. Luckily, they were all stored in the loft. She swayed and twirled, dancing her way across to the supply shelf.

“So I prepare this simple spell.

If you’d go home, it’d just be swell.

Double, double toil and trouble,

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

As the last word slipped out, Willow suddenly realized what had just happened. She’d been right. The summoning spell had worked.

 

**...**

_What have I done?_ Giles thought bleakly as he watched Buffy leave the shop. He’d sent his slayer off to fight alone while she was still so terribly fragile. _She needs to learn to stand on her own. Without you standing in the way._ That thought had been running through his mind all day, to the point where he’d even sung about it. He was in the way. She’d never stand on her own two feet if he was there to be her crutch.

 _She’s bloody broken, you git,_ a voice whispered through his mind. His own, still at battle against the realization he’d come to. _She needs a crutch if she’s to heal at all._ No. No, she could do this without them. Then she’d see that she needed to learn to live again and that she had to stop shirking her responsibilities when it came to Dawn.

 _She’s a young woman who lost her mother and then died, her soul trapped… somewhere for some seemingly large amount of time. How can she possibly be expected to take care of a teenage girl all by herself?_ It was the situation Buffy was in, however, and coddling her wouldn’t do her any good. She could achieve so much, if only he wasn’t standing in her way….

He absently wandered through the store as he struggled with his thoughts, eventually ending up behind the counter. Buffy didn’t need him. None of them did. The entire lot of them needed to stand on their own feet without him there, holding them back…. Holding them back. He’d held them back from helping Buffy, hadn’t he? But… he’d had to do that. To force Buffy to understand that she couldn’t use him… them… as crutches. He was… he was standing in the way….

Giles squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. It was all so bloody confusing. One thought nagged at him, though. Dawn was in danger, and the only one trying to help her was Buffy, who had been distancing herself from the world. What had he done?

He turned towards the others and began to sing.

 

**...**

 

Tara stared up at the ceiling, feeling numb. Heaven. They’d ripped Buffy out of heaven. How could they have done that? They’d been so sure she’d been in some sort of hell dimension. _Willow_ had been so sure, and none of them had thought to ask if she’d actually checked….

The numbness receded a bit, leaving her feeling sick. Why hadn’t they thought to ask? Had it just been because Willow was always so methodical in her research, or had it been because….

Tara scrambled out of the bed as fast as she could without waking Willow, the thought of being that close to the other woman making her skin crawl. After the reveal of what they’d done to Buffy, she’d… not forgotten, really, but had put aside what Willow had done to her. What was a forgotten argument compared to being torn away from heaven by those who supposedly loved you?

Buffy had slipped away, understandably not wanting to be around them. And Willow had fallen apart. Despite everything, Tara still loved her, so she’d taken her home and held her until she’d cried herself to sleep.

Now, though, deep in the night, Tara’s thoughts lingered on that forgotten argument and the spell that had taken the memory of it away from her. _Wish I could trust it was just this once._ The words from her song drifted through her mind. Just once would have been bad enough. But just once could be worked through. Trust could be built back up from a single mistake. But what if it _hadn’t_ been just once? How many times had Willow played with her mind?

She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself as the sick feeling increased. Her thoughts flashed back to after Glory had gone into her mind, horrible worms of power invading her self and sucking parts away. Willow had been there for her through all that. The only one by her side, the only…. Tara frowned slightly in confusion. Something about that didn’t seem quite right. She knew other people had been involved in taking care of her, but it was hard to really think about them. Willow loomed so heavily in her memories of that terrible time. Was it because of the trauma, or….

She turned and silently opened up the closet, kneeling down to dig out her personal stash of magic supplies. It had been a while since she’d done much with her power. Ever since Glory had…. She closed her eyes and forced herself to take slow, easy breaths. The magic was a force that filled her, just like Glory’s essence had filled her as she’d….

 _No,_ she told herself firmly, opening her eyes and quickly assembling the supplies she’d need. Then she plucked a single hair from her head. She wasn’t going to let Glory take her magic away from her. She wasn’t…. She stared at the hair in her hand and down at her spell ingredients. It would be easy to check and see if she was under some kind of spell, but was there really a point? She already knew that she was, and her own spell wouldn’t tell how many she was under. Breaking any memory or emotion spells wouldn’t be that much harder, once she knew they were there. The mind and feelings naturally fought against magical manipulation. She wouldn’t even need much more than what she already had out. She just had to….

A muffled sob from the bed caught her attention. They’d ripped Buffy out of heaven. Willow had ripped Buffy out of heaven, and she was hurting from that knowledge. Not as much as Buffy, but there was nothing Tara could do for Buffy right now. Willow, though?

Tara quietly put her spell components away and crawled back into the bed, pulling Willow into her arms.


	2. Chapter 2

Buffy wandered the streets, feeling oddly hollow and overwhelmed while wrapped up in a tattered blanket of numbness. Giles was gone. He’d just… _left._ Left her behind with bills and responsibilities she wasn’t prepared for. Left her behind with a “friend” who was abusing magic and a sister who was recklessly summoning demons. Yeah, Xander had claimed responsibility, but it had been clumsily blurted out last minute. He’d been covering for Dawn.

And now there was no adult authority figure to help her with Dawn’s acting out, because Giles had left. He was on the plane right now, flying away from it all and leaving her to deal on her own. Throw the baby into the deepest part of the ocean to sink or swim in the choppy water while fighting off sharks.

She wasn’t swimming. And the sharks….

She wrapped her arms around herself, holding on as best she could to keep from being sucked down into the cold, dark depths. She’d been happy as Joan. All of the memories of her life – and her death – had been gone, and she’d been so happy. Well, when she hadn’t been confused or terrified. But the happy had definitely been there, and now she couldn’t find it again, except when….

Her lips tingled with the memory of forbidden kisses. Spike had somehow become her only flotation device. Like a pair of fangy water wings or something. No. No, he was another shark. But one that seemed content to let her cling to his side while he fought the other sharks in the feeding frenzy. He didn’t expect her to be okay. He didn’t expect her to be happy. And he didn’t use magic to try to force her to be either of those things.

Willow’s spell had been evil. Even if it had worked the way it had been meant to, it would still have been evil. You didn’t just go inside someone’s mind without asking and prune away at it like it was some kind of squishy, gray bonsai tree. You couldn’t….

Her thoughts flickered for a moment, then settled on how they’d all been during that spell. Who they’d all been. Xander and Anya hadn’t had any real interest in each other without their memories. There’d been a connection, though, between Willow and Xander. And one between Willow and Tara. She and Dawn had known right away that they were sisters. And then there had been Spike.

Like all of them, he’d still been fundamentally himself. Snarky. Excited by the idea of a good fight. Attracted to her. And, somehow, completely unaware that he was a vampire. How was that even possible? Why hadn’t he wanted to bite them? She wanted to believe that maybe he’d pigged out on, well, pig, right before the spell had taken effect, but she knew that wasn’t it. It meant something, the whole not wanting to eat any of them thing. She just wasn’t sure what. She….

Her thoughts felt weirdly slippery, like anything about Spike as Randy was coated in oil. They skittered away, circling back to Willow. Had the spell really been all that much of a big deal? She’d just wanted to help, right? _Yeah, just like she “helped” me with that resurrection spell,_ she thought bitterly. With all the magic Willow was constantly flinging around, why couldn’t she have used some of it to actually check?

Anger flared for a moment, making her feel alive. Then it faded away. Buffy squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she suddenly realized that her feet had been taking her towards Spike’s crypt. Would he even be there? Or still at the Bronze where she’d left him after all the kisses?

It didn’t matter. She turned away, on the hunt for something she could kill.

 

**...**

 

Spike stared down into his drink, thoughts consumed with Buffy. She’d kissed him. Again. She could claim all she liked that she’d just been caught in the moment the first time, but this? She’d sought him out under the stairs and had pulled him close for a kiss. And then she’d gone right back at it after stopping for air. She couldn’t just write it off as not meaning anything. Could she?

He snorted and took a drink of his bourbon. Course she could. She was Buffy. Bloody queen of denial, she was. She’d swear the sky was orange with green polka dots if it meant she could hide from her feelings. Especially now, after all her so-called friends had put her through. Ripping her out of heaven, summoning demons, and then the latest bit of magic from Willow.

He sighed and took another swallow of alcohol before staring down into his glass again. Did any of that lot even realize what it meant, the fact that he hadn’t wanted to eat any of them? Fat chance of that. They never gave him the benefit of the doubt or did more than tolerate his existence.

He frowned slightly as he considered that. Something not quite right there, but he couldn’t…. They’d all started warming to him after he’d been tortured by Glory, even Xander. And then after… after the tower, he’d done patrols with them and watched Dawn. They’d trusted him. They’d….

The thoughts were strangely hard to hold onto, and he found himself thinking on Willow’s spell again. Idiot children, the lot of them, messing about with things they had no understanding of. And they’d obviously no understanding of him, not even after what had happened. Or, more accurately, what _hadn’t_ happened.

He’s lost his memory, not his demon. The average vampire would have realized what they were right off the bat and attacked. Spike had never been average. And he’d _always_ had control over the demon. Lack of memory hadn’t changed any of that. It had just sort of reset him to what he’d have been if Dru had buggered off instead of being there when he’d clawed his way out of the grave.

He shuddered at the memory of it and downed the rest of his drink.

She’d managed to turn him right proper, giving him plenty of blood so he’d be more than just a brainless minion. But then her sense had gone a bit walkabout, and she’d stuffed him upside down into an already occupied grave. He’d woken there, barely any room to move. No air to breathe. Hadn’t needed it, of course, but he hadn’t known that at the time. He’d panicked, lashing out at the corpse in the coffin and digging in the wrong bloody direction at first.

And despite that lovely bit of trauma, he’d come through it all just as Dru had intended. He still remembered the look of glee in her eyes as she’d clapped her hands together in joy.

 _“My Daisy Boy is not a tattered coat,”_ she’d declared.

He hadn’t understood her at that point, but as he’d learned her ways, he’d figured it out. The “coat was his humanity. Wore it loud and proud, he did, and always had, like Joseph and his bloody Technicolor Dreamcoat. But they were a colorblind lot, and were like to always be. Especially Buffy. She’d never really see….

His thoughts wandered to that night, in her living room before the tower. She hadn’t said much, but what she _had_ said…. The way she’d looked at him…. It was hard to hold onto. Hard to keep thinking on it. His thoughts drifted again, to when they’d been under the stairs. She’d kissed him. That had to mean _something._ Didn’t it?

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before ordering another drink. He didn’t want to be sober right now.

 

**...**

 

Xander stared up towards the ceiling, knowing he should be asleep. He had to get up pretty early if he wanted to shower, get dressed, and have some kind of breakfast before picking Dawn up for school on his way to work.

His thoughts didn’t seem to care about any of that. They were whirling through his head while doubts crept through his heart like clowns in the dark. He loved Anya. He knew he did. But…. They hadn’t even really noticed each other when they’d lost their memories. Anya had assumed she was engaged to Giles, and Xander had thought he was with Willow.

That wouldn’t have been so bad, except everyone else had seemed to instinctively recognize their connections. Dawn and Buffy had known they were sisters. Willow and Tara had started gravitating towards each other. Even the Bleached Wonder, with his tweed suit and Hat of Many Stupids, had shown an interest in Buffy. But him and Anya….

No connection. And if he was honest with himself, he’d been feeling like something was off for a while now, even before the hurtful song they’d ended up singing when Dawn had summoned that demon. He didn’t remember how he’d felt when he’d bought the ring. Or when he’d proposed to her. It was all sort of there, but… fuzzy. Like someone had thrown a wool blanket over his emotions. Come to think of it, a lot of things had been feeling that way. Why would…?

He turned over and curled up against Anya. He needed to get some sleep, or he’d be useless in the morning.

 

**...**

 

Tara slowly sat down on the bed, worn out and near tears. She should have already been asleep, snuggled up with Willow. Instead, she was in a friend’s guest room, most of her things already unpacked. At least, most of the things she’d actually brought with her. She’d made damn sure to pack up all of her magic supplies, but she knew she’d missed some of her clothes. Some of them on purpose because they held too many memories. And some just because she’d been in a hurry. She’d just wanted out of there. Away from Willow.

The tears started to fall. Was she even doing the right thing? Willow was going through a lot. She’d become addicted to the power she could hold over others. She needed help. And Tara was leaving her just when Willow needed her most.

 _No,_ she told herself, angrily wiping away the tears. _This is the best thing I can do for her._ And it was the best thing she could do for herself, no matter how much it hurt. Willow had to learn that there were consequences to her actions. And as for Tara herself…. She had to learn to stand up for herself and refuse to be abused. What Willow had done….

She stood up abruptly and walked over to the one box she hadn’t unpacked yet. Willow had tampered with her mind at least twice. What else might she have done to reshape Tara into who… _what_ … she wanted her to be?

She took a shaky breath as she fought back a fresh wave of tears. She would do this. She would be strong. And she wasn’t going to just let things slide anymore while hoping for the best. She had to know.

It didn’t take very long. Not really. Just a hair plucked from her head, a few supplies, and a quiet chant. That was all it took, and then she knew. Her hair glowed purple, showing that she was under the influence of magic that affected thoughts and emotions. Not really a huge surprise, since she’d never broken the memory spell that she knew about. It just meant that, if there were any other spells on her, they were of the same type.

The next spell was almost as simple as the first. Another hair. A silver bowl filled with salt water and herbs. She spoke the words and dropped the strand of hair into the water.

The memory was suddenly there. The argument at the Bronze, where Willow had talked about casually using massive amounts of magic to shift people from one reality to another and then back again. And then later that night. She’d been upset and in no mood for physical intimacy. But then something had changed and they’d….

Oh, god. Tara felt like she was going to be sick. Willow had…. She had…. No, she couldn’t have. She wouldn’t…. Tara squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to face what had happened. Willow had raped her. Her body. Her mind. The very core of her self. She’d been violated.

And that wasn’t even all of it. There were no more recovered memories, but so many things suddenly had more significance to them, like they’d become more vivid. The impact on the group of Joyce’s death. Spike letting himself get tortured instead of telling Glory about Dawn. The fight with Willow.

The fear and pain as Glory had sucked down her mind was still the same, but the help from Buffy, Dawn, and even Spike seemed to mean more now. He’d given Willow tips on how to take care of her. He’d told her it was alright when she’d accidentally burned him by pulling back the curtain in the RV.

Over the summer, she’d developed a good working relationship with him and Giles. And it had just sort of… slipped away. The same as the impact of how Spike had acted without his memories.

Feeling numb and sick, Tara stumbled back over to the bed and sat down. Willow had tampered with her memory and had muted her emotions towards other people. She’d wanted to be the only one that mattered in Tara’s life. She’d….

Tara curled up on the bed and cried, mourning the relationship she’d thought she’d had.


End file.
